


Harvest in Fire

by cgf_kat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Lance (Voltron) Angst, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Torture, Tortured Lance (Voltron), Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 10:36:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17806424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cgf_kat/pseuds/cgf_kat
Summary: The magistrate hands over the whip to one of the two aliens waiting beside the rack, and the other picks up a second.“Thirty for each of them and then into the cellars until I decide what to do with them.”No. His breath catches, and Lance can’t let this happen. He can’t. Not to Pidge. Not when this is his fault.***The inhabitants of a small trading village take it upon themselves to punish Lance and Pidge for Voltron’s disappearance.





	Harvest in Fire

“Hey, what are you doing!”

Lance cries out as an unseen hand yanks him back by his hood, pulling hair as they yank it down from his head to expose his face. Other rough hands are reaching for his arms, reaching for Pidge, locking them in the center of the quickly-forming mob. He blinks in the fine drizzle of rain his eyes are now subject to.

There was a reaction as soon as the word ‘Voltron’ fell from his lips. He should have kept his mouth shut. Why couldn’t he keep his mouth shut?

“You’re paladins of Voltron!”

The stall owner’s sharp cry brought eyes from across the market. His hands snapped to Pidge’s arm, ready to drag her away, but they were surrounded too quickly. Angry pedestrians and some kind of local law enforcement.

Why didn’t they bring their bayards? Why did he have to open his quiznaking mouth? They could have found what they needed cheaper somewhere else without him trying to—

“Watch it!” Pidge snarls, yanking her leg up as if someone stepped on her foot.

“Let her go!” Lance demands. Does he think they’ll really listen? Not really...but…

“Let HIM go,” Pidge retorts.

“You’re throwing off my groove, Pidge.” But for a moment the guilt tying a knot in his chest loosens. Pidge rolling her eyes at him is almost a relief; it comes with a certain fondness.

“It’d probably be a good idea to say something ELSE now!” she says.

Lance pulls back at the hands trapping his arms and only gains the butt of some kind of staff to face to show for it. “OW! Hey, what’s going on! We’re here to help!”

There’s so much shouting he can scarcely make any of it out. It’s hardly more than noise. But he can tell they’re angry as they drag him and Pidge toward the center of the small village.

Someone else—more than one someone else, he thinks—snatches at his jacket again, pulling it entirely free from his body so violently his shoulders wrench. “Ahhhh...hey, give that back!” He shouts, trying to cover the cry of pain. He glares at the smirking alien who has it now. “Wouldn’t look good on you, anyway!”

The crowd is so thick he doesn’t see the wide tree stump until the hands pulling at him spin him around and shove him forward to all but slam into it. About stomach-height, it knocks the breath out of him for a moment—long enough for his wrists to be secured in one of the sets of thick metal manacles fixed to the stump by steaks driven through the short chains.

“Lance!”

Across from him are wide honey eyes, eyebrows pushed high above them as Pidge yanks at her own chains. The stump is nearly chest high for her.

Lance is coughing, trying to get his breath back enough to protest. “What…!” Another cough. “What are you doing!” he demands.

His gaze jumps around the crowd surrounding them, looking for a sympathetic face, but he finds none. At least they finally have a little space now. The people are pulling back, clearing an area around the stump.

Voices finally start to stick out from the noise as it starts to die—as many go quiet as if anticipating something.

“Our lives are miserable thanks to you!”

“With no Voltron, what’s left of the Galra raid our villages!”

“We can barely feed our families!”

There’s more—accusation after accusation—but Lance almost stops hearing them for the buzzing in his ears. He feels almost lightheaded.

The angry mob begins to look less like a mob and more like a crowd of desperate families. Just people, trying to survive. Parents and children. Shop owners. Farmers like his parents.

“Lance...” Pidge says again. This time it’s a gasp, and when he catches her eyes, they’re damp. He can see what he’s thinking in her eyes.

_What if this IS our fault?_

The thick circle around them parts for a middle-aged-looking purple alien wearing some sort of colorful vest; everyone seems to defer to him. They look to him and the shouting goes silent.

“What should we do with them, Magistrate?”

The alien in the vest narrows his eyes, and Lance’s stomach drops. If there’s going to be a time to speak up…

“We didn’t mean to be gone for so long! There was an accident...weird...w-weird science stuff; we lost time. We couldn’t get back sooner. We didn’t mean to—”

“Silence!”

“He’s telling the truth!” Pidge speaks up. “The time dilation was caused by—”

“Speak out of turn again, and I will have one of you killed where you stand!”

Pidge closes her mouth. Her eyes are wide again, and Lance holds a breath. Surely they don’t mean that...but…

Oh god, maybe they do. And he can’t risk it. Not with Pidge.

The crowd is just as silent. The magistrate circles them and the stump, coming to a stop at a wooden rack of instruments at the edge of the cobblestone square surrounding the stump, before the roads become thatch and mud beyond it.

Two aliens stand beside it, waiting.

The magistrate reaches for what looks like a whip made of woven blades of thick grass; not quite rope, but somehow stiffer like leather would be. Some kind of native plant or something…a stiff handle wrapped tightly in some sort of burlap-like fabric for grip gives ways to several short tails embedded with what looks like bits of rocks and glass at the ends.

Lance presses his knees into the stump to hide them nearly giving way beneath him; his heart is beating so hard his chest hurts. Across, from him, the stump isn’t so wide he can’t hear Pidge’s breaths start to come shorter and more shallow.

The magistrate hands over the whip to one of the two aliens waiting beside the rack, and the other picks up a second.

“Thirty for each of them and then into the cellars until I decide what to do with them.”

No. His breath catches, and Lance can’t let this happen. He can’t. Not to Pidge. Not when this is his fault.

“Wait…!” he croaks. If they kill anyone just for him speaking, maybe it will at least be him. “Don’t hurt her!” he says in a rush, before they can decide to. “I’ll-I’ll take hers, I’ll—!”

“Lance, shut up!” Pidge hisses. The chains are just long enough for her to reach his hands and clasp at them. “You can’t do that; you’ll die!”

He throws her a glance, apologetic but not backing down. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he mumbles.

“Lance…!”

“J-just let her go and you can do what you want with me!”

Pidge growls. “Ignore him; he’s an idiot!”

He knows she doesn’t mean it—or he hopes she doesn’t—but Lance winces anyway. The magistrate, at least, is focusing on him now, crossing to him and pushing into his face until he almost has to lean backward.

His breath stutters in his chest, but he holds the alien’s gaze. If it’s some sort of test, he can only hope he’s passing.

When the magistrate pulls abruptly away, he huffs. “If you are content to die, then very well,”

He motions sharply to Lance as he backs off, giving the go ahead. Pidge is shouting in protest and for a moment there is the thrill of victory even as his stomach sinks to his feet and something in him begins to tremble.

All of him. It’s all of him trembling.

“We will not hurt her, but we will not let her go,” the magistrate adds.

“What?” Lance gasps. The burly aliens with the whips are closing in on him and he can’t breathe anymore. There are hands at his back, and the cool flat of a knife blade sends a shiver up his spine; his shirt is cut open and up the arms and everything from his waist up is left bare. “W-w-wait, no, let her go!”

“I’ll take mine!” Pidge shouts, but no one is listening anymore. Her fingernails are biting into his hands as she squeezes them.

Lance squeezes back because he has no other way to brace himself other than his knees already pressing back into the stump. The crowd is pressing closer but not too close, eager for the spectacle as the aliens with the whips take positions on either side of him.

Pidge is too close. Too close if they leave her there. Lance fights through the panic stealing his air as he pushes back against her hands gripping his to reach through her fingers, up for her face, beckoning. Begging.

“Pidge, get down! Pidge!” It comes out like a sob; he’s relatively certain that’s the only thing that gets her attention.

When she catches his gaze, there are already angry, frightened tears in her eyes. “No...!”

“Pidge, please…!”

It’s probably only reflex that makes her do it, in the end, but when she ducks down to hide her face against the top of the stump Lance seizes the chance to drop down, to cover her with his own head and arms—as far as he can go before the chains stop him.

Just in time before the first lash falls across his back like clawing fire.

***

Pidge doesn’t mean to duck. She catches the swing of the whip from the corner of her eyes and ducks automatically.

Immediate regret churns her stomach when a shocked shriek from Lance echoes near her ears as he drops over her head and arms.

“Lance…!” she gasps.

His breath shudders above her, maybe in pain and maybe anticipation of the second blow she hasn’t heard yet.

One hand he pulled free when she ducked, to wrap an arm around her head and shoulders, but the fingers of his other hand are still clutched between hers, trapped against the top of the stump beneath her chest now. They flinch when that next blow falls, Lance’s scream trailing off into a dry, shaking sob that ends in a whimper.

“Oh god,” he breathes. Beyond him the crowd is shouting, jeering...

Pidge chokes back a sob of her own.

That was only two. Oh quiznak, that was only two…

The next few seem to come at uneven intervals, surely on purpose, the waiting only there to make the anxiety worse. Both of them scarcely breathe between unless it’s to gasp out a sob. She knows hers aren’t dry, and before much longer her neck is damp from Lance’s tears. She squeezes his fingers tighter to let him know she’s there in the only way she can with her tongue tied in her mouth.

Her heart beats overtime as her mind runs over itself calculating, desperate to find some way the math comes out that Lance might survive this if the others don’t get to them in time.

On Earth the Romans could once kill someone with 40 lashes or less, but their whips were leather and these don’t seem as stiff. There are fewer tails...particulates are still tied into it—it will still be tearing flesh, but the pieces aren’t large, but...but the aliens are a little larger than the typical human. Probably stronger…

The data goes back and forth through her mind half a dozen times in a moment, but it never comes out any better.

Lance is going to die. Protecting her.

“Lance,” she whispers, between blows. “Lance…” Quiet enough no one else can hear but hopefully loud enough that he can. If he still has enough presence of mind to listen.

“You don’t have to do this,” she chokes quietly. “Don’t let them kill you…!”

His breath catches as he tries to answer her. “I...t’s my fault...my...”

Pidge doesn’t have time to say anything else before he stiffens over her with the next crack of the whip and a strangled cry pierces her aching ears. The blows are coming faster now.

“That doesn’t mean you have to die!”

Lance doesn’t answer, and when he starts to slip away from her she pulls back to clutch at his arm as he collapses, searching for his face as he slips to his knees against the stump. His arm slips through her grasp, but she catches his hand and holds on to both of them again.

“Lance!”

The edges of the wood on either side of his body are already damp with the blood dripping down his sides. Pidge doesn’t know why it’s the first thing she really sees when her head is free, but her heart stutters in her chest.

His hands squeeze around hers, his only lifeline, bleary, wet eyes seizing hers.

“Hang on,” she cries. What else is she supposed to say? Don’t die?

She can’t see his back, really, but she recoils at the movement of the next lash falling across it. She sees the force with which it falls for the first time rather than merely hearing it—the tails curling around to grip into his side and the way his body jerks when the alien yanks the whip away again, bringing skin and bits of flesh with it. She can’t quite tell, but the ends of them could be reaching as far around him as his chest and stomach. The rocks and glass could be raking all of it.

Is that why Lance can’t seem to be able to breathe well anymore? It isn’t just pain, is it? His hair is already plastered to his forehead with sweat, and his chest heaves in shallow, rapid breaths that only seem to make everything worse.

“Pidge…” His eyes snap shut briefly with the next blow, a sobbing cry wracking his shoulders. “‘M…’m sorry,” he gasps. He opens his eyes again only for one of the tails of the whip to catch his cheek on the next strike.

“Keep your head down…!”

Lance is already dropping it, burying his face against a lacerated arm. His wails are muffled there, but it doesn’t help.

It doesn’t help at all. Pidge is shaking as much as he is.

How many strikes? How many left? She meant to be counting, but she lost it long ago. She doesn’t know. She can’t even guess. Too many. When his sobbing trails away to silence and his hands go limp in hers she panics, lurching forward over the stump, whips be quiznaked.

“Lance! Lance!”

The aliens stop. Thank god, they stop. One of them moves in to drag his head up by his hair, but it’s clear Lance is unconscious and it’s going to take more than that to rouse him. His breaths are still coming short and shallow, but there’s no response.

Pidge is hoping they’ll stop. At least for now. Something. But the alien draws back as if to hit him.

“Don’t!” she cries. “Don’t wake him up! You don’t have to wake him up! Just let me do it! I’ll take the rest, please!”

  
They just stare at her at first, but the magistrate at least appears to be listening.

The idea that they might actually listen to her gives her more air in her chest—the ache eases, just a little—but what’s going to happen if they do sets her shivering harder than before. “Y-you’ll kill him...please...please d-d-don’t kill him. I’ll ta-take them, please…”

She can scarcely see the magistrate anymore, really, for the tears in her eyes, but she can see him shrug, finally...finally. Pidge gasps in anxious relief; everything in her tenses in fear, but she allows herself the moment of victory.

Lance isn’t going to die. At least...not right now.

A blade catches the collar of her shirt, and maybe out of some semblance of decency, the alien behind her stops the cut halfway or so down her back. The severed sides of the top of her shirt are roughly pushed out to expose most of her back, but her arms and chest are still covered. Somewhat protected.

Lance isn’t awake to help her brace herself, but she squeezes his hands anyway. If he hasn’t woken by now, that surely won’t wake him. And it’s all she has.

Pidge hears herself screaming almost before she really feels the first blow. It isn’t just stinging and biting; it’s fire ripping across her skin, cutting into her flesh. It’s as excruciating as she was sure it had to be, after what it did to Lance, and it’s somehow so much worse at the same time.

When the second blow falls, Lance’s fingers twitch in her tightening grip when she shrieks.

“Wh…” A deep groan as he stirs, but she can’t really see him.

It hurts. It hurts it hurts it—

Pidge screams through a sob as a third strike claws into her, and a fourth quickly after it from the other side. She thinks she hears a panicked, breathless call of her name, but it’s weak. She isn’t sure if she imagined it, but she can’t be imagining the sudden flash of light. Her ears are ringing, strangely enough, but not so much she can’t make out the whine of charging weapons and the voice that echoes through the square.

“Drop them! Drop them now!”

Keith.

She sobs again, but this time in relief.

Hunk, Krolia, and Keith’s growling wolf are keeping the crowd at bay and, Pidge presumes, the aliens behind her away. Clattering sounds make her think they listened and dropped the whips and any other weapons.

She doesn’t know what alerted their friends—they were miles away collecting water; they aren't even in armor—but she has never been so glad to see them.

Allura is with them too, glaring down the aliens as Keiths cuts the chains between their manacles...and Pidge has never seen Keith so furious as the look on his face when he leans close enough to cut hers. She’s never seen Allura so clearly shaking with rage as she is now, once she glances down to take in their wounds.

“How could you do this?” the princess snaps, hot and accusing.

“You allowed the Galra to ruin everything we have worked for!” the magistrate growls.

“And doing things like this makes you any better than them?”

“You will never understand—!”

“The Galra destroyed my PLANET! When they’ve reduced yours to rubble, then speak to me about how you believe you have the right to atrocities like this.”

Keith gingerly pulls one of Pidge’s arms around his shoulders and slips one around her still-covered lower back to help her up; it isn’t until then—until he helps her around the stump to join the rest of the group—that she can see what they’ve done to Lance. Really see. The blood-covered cobblestones around him and all.

Already dizzy and nauseous from pain, she gags, and Keith’s arms are the only things keeping her upright as she wretches onto the ground.

Allura and Krolia haul Lance up, carefully, and maybe he was somewhat awake again for a moment, but he passes out again when they move him. Hunk’s blaster, thankfully, is intimidating enough to keep the aliens at bay until they’ve all grabbed onto Keith's wolf.

A flash later, and the village square has been replaced by the interior of the black lion.

“I need to heal Lance, quickly,” Allura says immediately. Her voice shakes, though only slightly. “There is no way to know how much blood he has lost.”

His sides are just as torn and bloodied as his back, and just as Pidge feared, the damage even extends around to patches of his chest and stomach, out to his arms...in the few ticks since they teleported, blood has already dripped to the deck.

“Unless your abilities will compensate for particulates left inside of him, we should be sure nothing is embedded,” Krolia adds.

Coran, who only seems to have paused for a moment when they materialized, to take it the extent of what’s happened, is already all business. “The full body scanner in the stasis pod we have will help us find those more quickly.”

Allura swallows. “I...of course, and we...I should see to his chest first, I think. If his ribs or...or lungs, or any other internal organs are damaged that should be the priority…”

Keith helps Pidge find the edge of a crate to rest on, but he doesn’t seem to know what to say as he crouches beside her.

“Pidge…?”

She swallows, still trying to catch her breath. “I-I’ll be okay,” she gasps, swiping at her cheeks with shaking hands. “Lance is...Lance is worse. Just…”

“Keith!” Krolia calls. Lance may not be heavy, but the others need more help to get him up onto the stasis pod’s bed without hurting him too much. Coran has already covered it with a thick blanket.

A new hand rests on Pidge’s arm. “Romelle and I’ve got her,” a quiet voice says. Shiro. Keith exchanges a thankful glance with him before going to help the others with Lance.

“I’ll um...I’ll get rags. And some water,” Romelle says quickly. “We can do what we can until um...right.”

Then, for the moment, Pidge is left with only Shiro. But she doesn’t mind that so much. His arm moves around her shoulders, high and against her neck to avoid any of the stinging wounds and warm through what’s left of her shirt. Even sitting down, things are spinning.

“Easy...deep breaths...breathe, Katie...”

“I can’t...oh god...Shiro...they almost killed him…”

A wail cuts through the black lion’s cargo hold. Lance, awake again and panicking. They have him sitting on the bed of the stasis pod, Hunk and Keith holding his arms to support him in a sitting position so Allura can get to his chest.

Lance is in too much pain to know what’s happening. At least...that’s the way it looks to Pidge.

Her breath catches, and Shiro clings to her shoulders a little more tightly. “He’ll be all right,” he says. But even Pidge can hear the strain in his voice. When she glances up his gaze is caught across the room, eyes haunted like he’s really somewhere else.

Pidge doesn’t really want to know where else that might be. She wishes she could help, but she doesn’t know how.

“Lance, buddy, i-it’s okay, it’s just us,” Hunk is saying.

Allura has his face in her hands, trying to soothe him. “Lance, I know you are hurting...I know. You’re also having trouble breathing, and I need to see to that before anything else so it isn’t a danger to you. Please, calm down, please, it’s all right…”

Coran reaches in to press something to his neck—an injection. Pidge hopes it’s a painkiller.

Romelle returns with rags and basins of water for both the group huddled around Lance, and for her and Shiro. She settles on the crate behind Pidge and asks quietly if it’s all right to clean the wounds. Pidge nods absently, because what else is she supposed to say?

Across the cargo hold Allura and Hunk are finally succeeding in calming Lance enough for the princess to reach for his chest to begin healing it. He’s still crying, but at least the keen edge of distress has leached from the sound and his shallow breathing has slowed. Something in Pidge relaxes, too, even though she winces when Romelle presses one of the damp rags to her back.

The pain lessens when Coran breaks off from the others long enough to come give her an injection, too, and thank quiznak for Altean drugs.

At some point, it all still seems to become too much for Hunk. He gently hands off his side to Coran and comes to Pidge instead. Carefully hugging her from the front, just around her neck, he clings for a little while. She can’t blame him. She clings back, really, what’s left of the chains heavy around her wrists.

Hunk notices them when he pulls back, swiping at his eyes. “Oh, uh…” He catches one of her arms to study the manacle and its’ trailing, cut chain. “Right, I can...let me get something to get these off.”

Pidge only nods in answer; she doesn’t say anything to take away his excuse to leave the black lion for a while.

“Are we safe here?” Pidge asks, as she watches him go. “Where we landed...a-are we far enough away…?”

“We should be,” Shiro answers, quiet. “We’ll keep a watch through the night just in case.”

Hunk comes back with both a laser cutter and her bayard, holding up the laser cutter first. “I grabbed this, and then I realized you could probably just get them off yourself easier and then...yeah. I don’t know.”

“It’s okay,” she says. She holds out an arm to let him do it, only picking up her bayard when he’s gotten both of the metal bands off. “I can get Lance’s.”

“Uhm, yeah. Okay. I mean…”

“Are you sure you’re all right to get up?” Shiro asks.

Pidge pushes herself to her feet, five hands reaching out to steady her, but though she’s still a little dizzy it’s better than it was. More than wanting to stay still, she aches to get to Lance.

He’s calmer now, lying on his healed stomach as Allura alternately works at healing his back and sides, and uses the scanner to help her and Coran pinpoint any bits of rock and glass that need to be removed from his wounds. Still...she needs to get to him. She needs to know he’s really...still here. That he’ll really be all right.

It’s a relief to hear Lance breathing more deeply. The painkillers Coran gave them don’t seem to have done as much for him as they did for her—no surprise there, really, to see him still clearly in pain, even if it’s less—but he’s resting, only moving or wincing when Allura or Coran have to pick at the wounds that are left. He doesn’t open his eyes until Pidge has cut off both of his cuffs, but they’re clearer than they looked from across the room earlier.

He’s trying to smile at her. “Hey…”

“Hey…” Her stomach flips over and pressure builds in her throat all over again as she squeezes his hand, rubbing gently at the chafed skin around his wrist.

“You know I’d have killed you myself if you’d died, right?” she teases weakly.

Lance makes a face. “Yeah.”

Something nudges at the back of her legs, and Pidge finds Shiro and Romelle sliding a smaller crate up behind her for her to sit on. Glancing back to be sure she sits in the right place, she misses whatever makes Lance cry out but she feels him move.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Allura murmurs.

Pidge sits quickly, leaning closer and still clutching his hand as he tense and groans.

“I’m sorry, my boy boy,” Coran says. His hand rests for moment at the back of Lance’s head. “Not too much longer now, I should think.”

Lance goes still again, panting quietly. Tears that seem borne of exhaustion more than anything else at this point are trailing silently down his cheeks. Pidge swallows and swipes gently at them, leaning closer to rest her forehead against his. She just needs to be close. And he doesn’t seem to mind.

“Are you okay?” he asks. “They...you…I’m so sorry, I—”

“I’ll be okay. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it…”

At least he seems too tired to contradict her.

***

Hours later, Pidge has been healed, too, and nearly everyone is in pajamas after bathing in the stream just outside their campsite. Their clothes and the blankets and rags hang drying from being washed, on makeshift stands around the fire.

But Lance is nowhere to be seen, and he hasn’t been since Pidge came back from the stream with Romelle.

“He’s...I guess he’s okay?” Hunk told her. “Ish. I mean...he said he was going to rest, but I think he just really wanted to be alone.”

“Did he at least eat something?”

“A little. I wasn’t really gonna push it right now…”

Pidge can’t make herself eat much, either, and after sitting quietly around the fire for a while, wedged comfortably between Hunk and Shiro, no one stops her when she retreats from the group to find Lance.

She hasn’t seen him since Allura finished healing him. He reached for her when they helped him sit up; he was still shaky, but he got an arm around her neck the way Hunk had and Pidge was content to let him hold onto her that way for as long as he wanted to. Even with the drying blood that hadn’t been washed away yet, she returned the embrace as tightly as she could.

When he released her Hunk helped him down from the stasis pod bed and out of the black lion, toward the stream to get cleaned off. After that he never joined the rest of them around the fire.

Not that she can blame him. Even sitting there, she didn’t feel much like talking.

“Lance?” She calls up Red’s ramp, but gets no answer. He may be sleeping, but she doesn’t think he’ll mind if she checks.

His back is to her when she tiptoes through the open door to the cargo hold. “Lance?”

He shifts, turning over in his bed to look at her in the dimness. “Pidge?”

Even in the low light, she can tell his face is red and irritated from crying, and her chest clenches.

“A-are you okay?” he asks. “Allura…?”

“Yeah. I’m fine…”

Lance is clean and in his pajamas too, now, and if it weren’t for the exhaustion written on his face under the redness she could almost pretend nothing happened.

But she can’t. She could never. Not after that. She doesn't know if she’ll ever be able to forget what he looked like, or forget how he screamed.

“Pidge…?” Lance is moving as if to get up, his eyebrows rising on his forehead. She doesn’t realize until then that her fists have clenches and her breaths have sped up.

She crosses the room because she can’t not, her bare feet picking up speed on the deck until she all but barrels into him. Lance catches her with an on ‘oof’ and falls back onto the edge of the bed.

“You’re an idiot!” she sobs.

With her face buried against his neck, she feels him swallow. “Come on, you don’t really think that…”

“Yes I do! I mean...no. Yes. You’re not STUPID, Lance, you’re just an IDIOT.” Her fists falls against his chest for emphasis.

“Thanks for the clarification…?”

Pidge huffs out a breath in frustration and pulls back to look him in the eyes, her knee braced on the bed against him. “I thought you were going to die like that! For me! Did you think I wanted to live with that?”

His mouth opens and closes once or twice before he can answer. “I...I just didn’t want them to hurt you because I couldn’t keep my quiznaking mouth shut, Pidge. I…”

“Come on, Lance; they probably would have figured out who we were anyway.”

“I’m sorry…” His head ducks against her as if in shame, and no, that’s not what she wanted.

“No, no, I didn’t mean…” Maybe she did want him to apologize. But why? Because she’s never been more terrified in her life? How is that his fault? She pulls him closer again. “Sorry, I was just...scared,” she whispers. “I’m sorry it...happened. At all. Quiznak—”

She cuts off to choke back a soft sob, and Lance squeezes back, tugging down a bit until she lets her knees fold up. She means to come down beside him on the edge of the bed, but he pulls her into his lap instead.

When Pidge pulls back to see his face again, his cheeks are red for an entirely different reason as she glances from his face, down to the fact that she’s now sitting on his legs, and up again with a raised eyebrow.

“S-sorry,” he stammers.

His arms twitch around her waist, pulling back to let go, but she catches one to keep them there. “It’s okay…”

Her thumb presses gently into his cheek, caressing the side of his face the whip had caught. The gash there is gone now, thank goodness, but she finds faint marks behind his ears and down the back of his neck that linger. Small dents in his flesh that she almost wouldn’t have noticed if she weren’t looking, most of them half hidden under his hairline.

“Allura said there were some places there was just...too much missing, or something,” Lance says quietly, while he lets her look. “She couldn’t smooth it over.”

She missed that. Before. She was there until Allura was done but the painkillers were wearing thin by then. She remembers Lance hugging her briefly, but not all of what happened is clear.

“Your back…?”

“Yeah...there’s some bigger ones there. Hunk uh...he said it’s not too bad, or anything…” He trails off tightly anyway. He looks away like he’s ashamed, and why should he be? No no no, he can’t—

Pidge pulls his chin back and presses her lips to his before she can think about what she’s really doing. What she’s giving away. Lance pulls in a breath through his nose and rocks back in surprise, but she follows him and he doesn't stop her. In a moment he’s responding to the kiss, and his arms tighten pleasantly around her waist again.

They nearly fall backward entirely by the time they stop, Lance shooting an arm back to steady himself as Pidge slides off his lap and onto the mattress. Pidge is laughing. She thinks Lance is until she sees the tears on his face.

“Lance…! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s okay!” he says quickly. It comes out frustrated, but not at her—the kind of tone that makes it clear he’s more frustrated with himself, and now he IS laughing. He’s also still crying. “I just...I’m sorry, I...a few hours ago I thought I’d never get the chance to do that.”

What?

Lance is trembling as he says it, and Pidge doesn’t have time to process that. She winces as she urges him back against the head of the bed and his pillows. She lays beside him and wraps herself around him, trailing fingers gently through his hairs until he calms. The faint tremors last longer, but after what happened to him she isn’t surprised.

“Will you stay?” he asks into the dimness. “Sorry I’m a mess…”

Pidge snorts quietly and presses a kiss into his hair. “And I’m not? Just in general?” Lance laughs at that, and her chest warms with the victory. “Anyway...I’ll stay.”


End file.
